


When She Stole My Heart Sleeves

by PreAlexa



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/F, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied Sexual Content, LGBTQ Themes, Lesbian Character, Married Couple, One Shot Collection, Romanticism, Short One Shot, Strong Female Characters, Victorian, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 07:53:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20336686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreAlexa/pseuds/PreAlexa
Summary: Super eensie-weensie one shot on the day of their wedding. I normally don’t write this little, but I attempted to say much. I wrote this quickly and tried to capture the flavor of their times in tone and language. Thanks for indulging me!





	When She Stole My Heart Sleeves

Anne Lister was now married. It may not have been a legally binding contract, but it was in the eyes of her and Ann Walker’s, to whom they prayed and took communion to bind their love, in front of God, on a warm and breezy spring day.

They strode home stealing glances, grazing hands, and occasionally locking fingers together in the small passing moments when they could be discreet under Ann’s frilly sleeve ends. When they were on busier public streets, Anne would gaze affectionately upon her ring; a bright and joyous smile spreading across her features, and the light of that love shone into the eyes of her beloved’s, too. Soft tears stinging at the back of her eyes making her, for once, not self-conscious, but proud of their bold undertaking and commitment to another.

Ann Walker was her wife.

Ann, as quiet and demure as she was, had a resolve of iron will when she believed in matters of great importance. Anne Lister being such a person of importance, she deeply regretted it had taken her so long to come upon a formal decision, but the time away from Anne gave her pause to think, to truly delve and decide what it means to be in love with a woman. What it means before the world and the stage they set upon, paving their own true and unique path. She stood upon that windy bluff where Anne had screamed out her frustrations, and with a sureness, a calmness in her eyes, all but begged Anne to ask her. Again.

“Please don’t break my heart.” Vulnerable words coming from Anne Lister weren’t commonplace. The blonde held her resolve, eyes fixated on the exasperated woman standing before her. "I'd say yes."

The sun was now past midday as they neared Shibden Hall where the servants and the Lister family held a small banquet to honor their union. Key people knew of their ‘secret’ and each person, in turn, raised a toast to celebrate their love. How refreshing given they were a step out of time, in the century they lived in, and they’d never truly be able to properly marry, or feel accepted into their society. Though Ann was worth a fortune and this gave them more room to be free, they’d never really be free.

Anne wouldn’t feel fully liberated until they consummated their love, in her bed, in her ancestral home, because for her this act of physical love would complete the ceremonial act of their marriage pact. This would forge Ann into her wife of body and heart. She would enter Ann, make the slowest and deepest of love to her, while joining their ring hands clenched upon a climax.

When the sun had set the Lister clan made their plans to call upon another social circle, to allow the women to be alone.

Anne took her lover’s hand into her own, the rings on their right hands clinking lightly against the other, a musical reminder of what was about to happen, of what was about to become more real.

Ms. Walker was no longer a Walker in her heart. She was Mrs. Anne Lister. She took off her bonnet and tossed it into an adjacent victorian chair.

She was going to show Anne the totality of what her heart was feeling.

Anne shed the tears she held onto tightly throughout the day, her tough exterior fully extinguished tonight, like the candles Ann had snuffed out as they began the intimate and deliberate dance of their coupling. The pale blue glow of moonlight entering the large window of the bedroom, enhancing their full, feminine forms, as they each delicately removed the other’s clothing.

By the grace of God, they would prove to each other the depth of their love for as long as they both should live.


End file.
